ABSTRACT
Drawing on one of my studies of Vivian Gussin Paley’s storytelling and storyacting practice, which I have observed and analysed in a range of preschool classrooms, this chapter traces the development of young children’s narrative abilities as they participated in this activity over the course of a school year. Specifically, it analyses a body of 118 spontaneous stories generated through storytelling and story acting in a preschool classroom of children from low-income backgrounds in a semi-rural area in the northeastern United States. The results show significant improvements in the children’s narrative skills, as measured by a range of criteria. The study reported here adds to increasing evidence that storytelling and story acting, in addition to its other valuable features, can help promote narrative development and the foundations of emergent literacy in young children from low-income and otherwise disadvantaged backgrounds.
